Just more than 400,000 railway cars loaded with dangerous goods travelled through Canada last year, but no one at Transport Canada knows exactly where they went, what they contained or what route they took, a federal government report has found.

To get through the exit door of a downtown pharmacy the other night, I had to squeeze by a young man who was standing in the doorway, texting. He’d been heading out of the store when a message on his phone captured his attention, apparently, and he was evidently unable to go even one step farther before responding to it.

WASHINGTON — The president sealed his victory in Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire and Colorado, four of the nine battleground states where the two rivals and their allies spent nearly $1 billion on duelling television commercials.

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama joined one of his top Republican critics to visit victims of superstorm Sandy on Wednesday, giving Americans a high-profile display of presidential leadership while leaving rival Mitt Romney awkwardly on the sidelines less than a week before Election Day.

It was pegged as a battle of cannon balls, and it didn’t disappoint. Right from the beginning of the first and only vice-presidential debate, Joe Biden and Republican rival Paul Ryan squared off over foreign policies with Biden easily parrying Ryan’s thrusts over U.S. President Barack Obama’s policies on Iran’s nuclear program and the recent attacks on American embassies.

Everyone can picture Montreal’s famous sights: the view of glittering skyscrapers from the Champlain Bridge, milling crowds on St. Catherine St., skaters at Beaver Lake and the orange glow of a wood-fired bagel oven.

Shoes, wallets, paper rained down on the streets of New York. Ash stung eyes and seared lungs. People – a woman in a green suit, another whose dress billowed with the momentum of 105 storeys – fell from the sky. At home or at work, we watched those mythic skyscrapers collapse, crumpled heaps of twisted steel, concrete and human remains.

From the time I received the call to come into the office to pick up a reporter and head straight to New York – without even taking time to pack a bag – to finally making it to Brooklyn after 11 that night, the events play in my mind as a series of vignettes.

Over the last six years, the cigarette smuggling business has grown “exponentially,” the RCMP say. Weak enforcement, willing suppliers and big demand suggest how difficult it will be to disrupt what has become a billion-dollar black market.

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